Box 2 An independent clearing house for UK drug discovery?

Academic institutions focusing on translational research require a continual flow of high-quality, early-stage projects to justify the level of investment required—something many institutions, at least in the UK, may find difficult. Even so, schemes set up to develop more commercially relevant science have been established by the major UK funding bodies, such as the Medical Research Council Technology's Drug Discovery Group and The Wellcome Trust's Seeding Drug Discovery Initiative, both based in London. In either case, monies are invested in identifying targets and developing compounds or tools to further validate the early-stage research¹³ (http://www.mrctechnology.org/CO_DD.htm). The Wellcome Trust scheme is a competitive one that is open to academics and companies.

Another means of encouraging translational research would be to develop a single UK 'drug discovery facility' under the management of an independent committee of industry and academic scientists accessible to all UK research institutions. This would be a high-quality resource perhaps modeled upon synchrotron facilities in operation in Europe, where beamline time is dispensed to users upon application. With improved validation comes increased industry interest. If the UK is serious about developing commercially attractive propositions, it would be interesting to explore the use of commercially available contract research organizations to further develop compounds and technologies, perhaps funded through a central pool of government money.